scholarly journals Rewriting the Western: Transnational Dimensions and Gender Fluidity in Sebastian Barry’s Days without End

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
David Río Raigadas
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American West ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
Irish Immigrants ◽  
Gender Fluidity ◽  
Frontier Narratives ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Main Protagonist

The present essay will explore the Irish writer Sebastian Barry’s transnational rendering of the American West in his novel Days without End (2016), emphasizing his representation of neglected western questions and realities and his revision of traditional western tropes and archetypes. Barry’s approach to the American West in Days without End moves beyond the regional and national imagery of this territory, revealing its international and hybrid properties and its multiple and overlapping cultures. It is argued that Barry’s recreation of a different reality from the traditional western monomyth of masculinity, individualism, and Anglo-American conquest allows him to challenge classical frontier narratives and to address international and transcultural issues, such as gender fluidity. The novel, whose main protagonist and narrator is a poor, homosexual Irish immigrant, embraces a different West, questioning romanticized versions of the westward expansion and drawing interesting connections between the Irish immigrants in this region and the Native Americans. Overall, Days without End may be viewed as an acute depiction of the transnational dimension of the American West, proving the power of the Western to overcome its traditional formulaic and mythic boundaries and to travel across global spaces.

scholarly journals DNA, Historical Evidence and The Settlement of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in Colonial Texas

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
American West ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
Genealogical Analysis ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
The Alamo ◽  
Jewish Descent

The Lone Star state has long been a symbol of the American West, complete with cowboys, Native Americans, buffalo, cattle drives and the Alamo. Using DNA and genealogical analysis, together with historical documents, this article shows that both the original Spanish settlers and the later “Anglo” arrivals were primarily of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jewish descent. These findings challenge traditional narratives of “how the West was won”, as well as the prevailing ideology of Anglo-American culture.

Reviews: History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory, Families of the King, Writing Identity in the, a History of Old English Literature, Imagining Robin Hood, Elizabethan Triumphal Processions, Shakespeare: National Poet-Playwright, Shakespeare and Republicanism, Literature, Gender and Politics during the English Civil War, Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy, Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought, Gentility and the Comic Theatre of Late Stuart London, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture, the Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility, between East and West. Polish and Russian Nineteenth-Century Travel in the Orient, Reinventing King Arthur. The Arthurian Legends in Victorian Culture, Imagining London, 1770–1900, Friendship's Bonds. Democracy and the Novel in Victorian England, the Parlour and the Suburb. Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity, History and Representation in Ford Madox Ford's Writings, Ford Madox Ford and the Regiment of Women: Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen, Janice Biala, New Woman Hybridities: Femininity, feminism and International consumer Culture, 1880–1930, Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust, E.H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal, Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition, ‘To Hell with Culture’: Anarchism and Twentieth-Century British Literature, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950sLa CapraDominick, History in Transit: Experience, Identity, Critical Theory , (Cornell University Press, Cornell and London, 2004), pp. xi + 274, £28.95, £11.50 pb.SheppardAlice, Families of the King, Writing Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, University of Toronto Press2004, pp. 266, $70.FulkR.D. and CainChristopher M., A History of Old English Literature , Blackwell, 2002, pp. 346, £40.PollardA. J., Imagining Robin Hood , Routledge, 2004, pp. xvi + 272, £15.99.LeahyWilliam, Elizabethan Triumphal Processions , Ashgate, 2005, pp. viii + 171, £40.00.CheneyPatrick, Shakespeare: National Poet-Playwright , Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. xv + 319, £45.HadfieldAndrew, Shakespeare and Republicanism , Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. xiv + 363, £48.PurkissDianne, Literature, Gender and Politics during the English Civil War , Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. vi + 300, £48.PanekJennifer, Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy , Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. x + 243, £45PetersBelinda Roberts, Marriage in Seventeenth-Century English Political Thought , Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. ix + 243, £45.00.DawsonMark S., Gentility and the Comic Theatre of Late Stuart London , Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. xvi + 300, £48.HarveyKaren, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture , Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 265, £45.StevensLaura M., The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native Americans, and Colonial Sensibility , University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, pp. 264, $39.95.KalinowskaIzabela, Between East and West. Polish and Russian Nineteenth-Century Travel in the Orient , University of Rochester Press, 2004, pp. 200, £50.BrydenInga, Reinventing King Arthur. The Arthurian Legends in Victorian Culture , Ashgate, 2005, pp. 182, £40.RobinsonAlan, Imagining London, 1770–1900 , Palgrave, 2004, pp. xix + 291, £55.DellamoraR., Friendship's Bonds. Democracy and the Novel in Victorian England , University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, pp. 252, illustrated, $47.50.GilesJudy, The Parlour and the Suburb. Domestic Identities, Class, Femininity and Modernity , Berg, 2004, pp. ix + 197, £15.99 pb.WiesenfarthJoseph (ed.), History and Representation in Ford Madox Ford's Writings , International Ford Madox Ford Studies Volume 3, Rodopi, 2004, pp. xi + 241, £34 pbWiesenfarthJoseph, Ford Madox Ford and the Regiment of Women: Violet Hunt, Jean Rhys, Stella Bowen, Janice Biala , University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, 30 plates, pp. xvi + 217, $34.95.HeilmannAnn and BeethamMargaret (eds), New Woman Hybridities: Femininity, feminism and international consumer culture, 1880–1930 , (Routledge Transatlantic Perspectives on American Literature), Routledge, 2004, pp. xv + 279, £63.HirschMarianne and KacandesIrene, Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust , New York, Modern Languages Association of America, 2004, pp. viii + 509, $22 pb.CoxM. (ed.), E.H. Carr: a critical appraisal , Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, pp. xxii + 352, £68, £19.99 pb.LehanRichard, Realism and Naturalism: The Novel in an Age of Transition , University of Wisconsin Press, 2005, pp. xxxiv + 312, $60.KlausH. Gustav and KnightStephen (eds), ‘To Hell with Culture‘: Anarchism and Twentieth-Century British Literature , University of Wales Press, 2005, pp. 214, £40.SpencerStephanie, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s , Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. xii + 253, £55.00.

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-92
Author(s):  
Michael Jardine ◽  
Barbara Yorke ◽  
Philip Cardew ◽  
John Simons ◽  
Ben Lowe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
English Literature ◽  
King Arthur ◽  
Ford Madox Ford ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Old English Literature ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Robin Hood ◽  
And Gender

Diaghilev and British Writing

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.

Minorities in the Contemporary Egyptian Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Youssef
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Robust Analysis ◽  
Specific Approach ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Historical Moment

This book examines questions of identity, nationalism, and marginalization in the contemporary Egyptian novel from a postcolonial lens. Under colonial rule, the Egyptian novel invoked a sovereign nation-state by basking in its perceived unity. After independence, the novel professed disenchantment with state practices and unequal class and gender relations, without disrupting the nation’s imagined racial and ethno-religious homogeneity. This book identifies a trend in the twenty-first-century Egyptian novel that shatters this singular view, with the rise of a new consciousness that presents Egypt as fundamentally heterogeneous. Through a robust analysis of “new-consciousness” novels by authors like Idris ᶜAli, Bahaᵓ Tahir, Miral al-Tahawi, and Yusuf Zaydan, the author argues that this new consciousness does not only respond to predominant discourses of difference and practices of differentiation along the axes of race, ethno-religion, class, and gender by bringing the experiences of Nubian, Amazigh, Bedouin, Coptic, Jewish, and women minorities to the fore of Egypt’s literary imaginary, but also heralds the cacophony of voices that collectively cried for social justice from Tahrir Square in Egypt’s 2011-uprising. This study responds to the changing iconographic, semiotic, and formal features of the Egyptian novel. It fulfills the critical task of identifying an emergent novelistic genre and develops historically reflexive methodologies that interpret new-consciousness novels and their mediatory role in formalizing and articulating their historical moment. By adopting this context-specific approach to studying novelistic evolution, this book locates some of the strands that have been missing from the complex whole of Egypt’s culture and literary history.

The Blue Flower and the Account Book

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Anne F. Hyde
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
American West ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Blue Flower ◽  
Racial Category ◽  
North American West ◽  
Mixed Blood ◽  
Anglo American

This essay, a revised version of the August 2015 talk, examines the story of two mixed-blood women, indigenous and Anglo American, who lived in the fur trade North American West. The essay examines a racial category, mixed blood or “half-breed” and considers the challenges for people who lived in and used that category in the nineteenth century. The essay illuminates the challenges of using different kinds of personal records to understand how these nineteenth-century women might have thought about identity, a word they never would have used.

Who’s holding up the sky? On Rymba, a novel by A. Bushkovsky

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-158
Author(s):  
A. V. Zhuchkova
Keyword(s):  
Gender Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Flood Zone ◽  
The Social ◽  
Russian North ◽  
And Gender

The article deals with A. Bushkovsky’s novel Rymba that goes beyond the topics typical of Russian North prose. Rather than limiting himself to admiring nature and Russian character, the author portrays the northern Russian village of Rymba in the larger context of the country’s mentality, history, mythology, and gender politics. In the novel, myth clashes with reality, history with the present day, and an individual with the state. The critic draws a comparison between the novel and the traditions of village prose and Russian North prose. In particular, Bushkovsky’s Rymba is discussed alongside V. Rasputin’s Farewell to Matyora [ Proshchanie s Matyoroy ] and R. Senchin’s The Flood Zone [ Zona zatopleniya ]. The novel’s central question is: what keeps the Russian world afloat? Depicting the Christian faith as such a bulwark, Bushkovsky links atheism with the social and spiritual roles played by contemporary men and women. The critic argues, however, that the reliance on Christianity in the novel verges on an affectation. The book’s main symbol is a drowning hawk: it perishes despite people’s efforts to save it.

Highlighting the Correlation Between Telomere Shortening and the Susceptibility to the Novel SARS-CoV-2 Virus (COVID-19)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aml Ghanem
Keyword(s):  
Telomere Length ◽  
Stress Responses ◽  
Viral Infections ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Telomere Shortening ◽  
Infection Pathways ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Demographic Distribution

COVID-19 is a global crisis that requires a deep understanding of infection pathways to facilitate the development of effective treatments and vaccines. Telomere, which is regarded as a biomarker for other respiratory viral infections, might influence the demographic distribution of COVID-19 infection and fatality rates. Viral infection can induce many cellular remodeling events and stress responses, including telomere specific alterations, just as telomere shortening. In brief, this letter aims to highlight the connection between telomere shortening and susceptibility to COVID-19 infection, in addition to changes in telomeric length according to the variation of age and gender of confirmed cases with COVID-19 infection. To sum up, the correlation is revealed from the available data that connect telomere length and COVID-19 infection, demonstrated in the fact that the elderly patients and males are more susceptible to COVID-19 due to shortening in their telomere length.

The Roman Aura in Henry James’s Daisy Miller: A Study (1878)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Carlos Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Classical Culture

Concentrating on Henry James’s Daisy Miller, this chapter reveals its author engaging in arguments over the decline and fall of the Roman Empire among nineteenth-century Anglo-American writers and over the best means of using Rome’s example as a warning to contemporaries. The novella’s Roman setting and frequent references to classical culture both extend Anglo-American Romantics’ emphasis on the Roman failure to develop a comprehensive democracy and allow James to pursue his own interest in post-Civil War America as an emerging global power. Departing from earlier interpretations of Rome’s importance within Daisy Miller, this chapter argues that James employs the character of Daisy to reconceive Rome’s relevance to central issues of class and gender. If James rejects aspects of contemporary American feminism embodied by such classically inspired artists as Harriet Hosmer and Maria Louisa Lander, he nevertheless makes his unsophisticated heroine, Daisy, into a means of expressing his democratic vision.

North and South

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Sally Shuttleworth
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Difficult Problem ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Authority ◽  
Industrial Town ◽  
Middle Class Woman ◽  
Class Woman ◽  
And Gender ◽  
North And South ◽  
Obedience To Authority

`She tried to settle that most difficult problem for women, how much was to be utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much might be set apart for freedom in working.’ North and South is a novel about rebellion. Moving from the industrial riots of discontented millworkers through to the unsought passions of a middle-class woman, and from religious crises of conscience to the ethics of naval mutiny, it poses fundamental questions about the nature of social authority and obedience. Through the story of Margaret Hale, the middle-class southerner who moves to the northern industrial town of Milton, Gaskell skilfully explores issues of class and gender in the conflict between Margaret’s ready sympathy with the workers and her growing attraction to the charismatic mill ownder, John Thornton. This new revised and expanded edition sets the novel in the context of Victorian social and medical debate.

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